Double Sparring For Me

It was a full house in the gym tonight.  Nate returned with a woman whom I believed he introduced to Alan as his wife.  She said she missed the first week of the summer session.  Cynthia asked me if Ray had come in.  He didn't, and he was one of only a few who were not in attendance. 

A guy who used to box at Clarendon Park came by to see Alan.  The man had his two children with him, a boy, aged 10 and a girl 11-going-on-12.  The boy put on headgear and got into the ring for a mock fight with Alan.  Alan got down on his knees in order to even the playing field.  The man told me that his son was interested in taking up the sport, and that his daughter showed interest, too.

Below are images of two different sparring sessions that took place.  The one I didn't videotape was the sparring session between Oscar and Jacob.  Jacob is way taller than Oscar, but the shorter man handled his business.  He did a very nice job at one point using his jab to confound Jacob.   Jacob can been seen in a couple of clips here going up against Marcus.  It was the first time that Marcus had sparred.  While the two men sparred, I turned the camera around to show what else is usually going on in the gym while there is action taking place inside the ring.

The clips with the two women?  The little short dark complexioned woman is me; I finally remembered to have someone tape me while I sparred (Alan did the honors).  The dark-haired woman is Ursula, who can throw some good hits.  She caught me in the mouth and face a few times.  I kept landing jabs to her face and hooks to her head.  "Easy!" Alan warned me at one point when I was hitting a little too hard.  I inherited my late father's heavy hands, and sometimes, I don't realize that I'm going too hard on someone.  That was the first times in months that I was able to get so many head shots in. 

I had a few rounds rests in-between Ursula and Sarah, but the rest period didn't help me much with Sarah.  I tried the relaxed and easy stance that I did with Ursula, but I got dusted, as my late Uncle Fred used to say.  Sarah popped me in my right eye several times, simply because I was too slow to move my head and protect my face.  One such shot had me seeing double out of that eye for a few moments.  Remember, that was the eye I had to have checked last summer because I thought the retina was torn.  All in all, I did four rounds this evening, one more round than I have done in a long time. 

Alan wanted to keep the fact that tomorrow is his 60th birthday under the radar.  I didn't mention anything about it until the end of the evening when we were walking to his car. Guys don't usually make a big deal out of their birthdays, even if it's a milestone one, while women spend a lot of time bemoaning the fact they are getting older.  It's funny.   "It's a blessing, but I can hardly believe I got to this point.  Time goes so fast," he said.